How restlessly the buddha sleeps
between my ears, dreaming his dreams
of emptiness, writing his verbless poems
(I almost rejected"green tree
white goat red sun blue sea.")
Verbs are time's illusion, he says.

In the stillness that surrounds us
we think we have to probe our wounds,
but with what? Mind caresses mind
not by saying no or yes but neither.

Turn your watch back to your birth
for a moment, then way ahead beyond
any expectation. There never was a coffin
worth a dime. These words emerge
from the skin as the sweat of gods
who drink only from the great mothers breasts.

Buddha sleeps on, disturbed when I disturb
him from his liquid dreams of blood and bone.
With out comment he sees the raven carrying
off the infant snake, the lovers' foggy
gasps, the lion's tongue that skins us.

One day we dozed against a white pine stump
in a world of dogwood and sugar plum blossoms.
An eye for an eye, he said, trading
a left for my right, the air green tea
in the sky's blue cup.

Jim Harrison (Saving Daylight)